Spring is Here

Well, It is 4 AM and I am up as usual. I have struggled this pregnancy to sleep much and usually fight getting out of bed. I usually lay there - tossing and turning and watching the clock change every few minutes. But today, I thought I would just get up and do a couple of things. So I am trying to catch up on my blog this morning. It is so quiet this early in the morning and I can actually spend time thinking and pondering the many blessings I have.

I am so grateful for spring. I love the flowers, warm sunshine, being outside, and blue skys. Yesterday was Saturday and we spent the morning cleaning the basement (getting it ready to paint) and afternoon working in the garden. We mostly weeded and at the end we actually got to plant some tomatoes, onions and other veggies. We struggled to get the kids to help, but they did do some and I hope it is something they can appreciate as they look back. We will let Collin and Megan grow some of their own plants and be in charge of weeding some sections of the whole garden. As we were out there working, I have to admit it wasn't fun, but there is a good feeling once you do work hard and can see the results. I wish I could learn the trick of teaching kids the value of work.

I want to catch up on some of the things we have been doing this spring. Back in April, the kids had spring break - just after Easter. It was beautiful and warm on Easter day. Monday we had a picknic at the park and the kids wanted to play in sprinklers. The kids settled for playing with their waterguns in the backyard. By Thursday, we had a huge, wet snowstorm. We enjoyed building the best snowman of the year and eating our peeps in hot cocoa. It made for an interesting spring break. My daffodills were in full bloom this week.

The begining of May the kids got to spend a long weekend with Grandma and Grandpa Bogue while Ryan and I traveled to some neat places in the East. We went to Detroit and saw a Tigers Game, then drove to Kirtland Ohio, next to Palmyra, NY, and then back to Niagra Falls. It was a fun long weekend getaway for us. I don't know how much Grandma enjoyed being in charge of kids for a long weekend. But she sure had a positive attitude about it. We appreciated all she did to take care of the kids which gave us a few days to spend alone on our trip.

Now we are approaching the end of the school year. Both Collin and Megan earned their "Distinguished Dragon" award - which means they worked hard this year and did well in their classes. To get this they had to pass off some minimum requirements for their grade level and even did some extra credit work. The kids have been working on end-of-the-year programs, along with tests. We just went to Collin's "Rock" Concert - where all the 4th graders sang songs about rocks. It was kind of cool. Megan's program will be next week - along with having her birthday. She is looking forward to the begining of June when she will be baptized.


Caleb is anxious for Collin and Megan to get out of school. He loves it when they are home. Caleb and I spend a lot of time together and he gets rather bored with my entertainment. I think he is enjoying the warm weather as well. His favorite things to do are play with friends, ride bikes, jump on neighbor's trampolines and go to the park. I have started him on a computer preschool program where he gets to learn some of his ABCs and pre - reading skills there. We hope to find a good preschool with other kids in the fall. He still has another year before starting Kindergarten.

Well, Ryan and I are keeping busy trying to get the basement finished and house in order, along with keeping up with the kids and their many needs. We are getting anxious for a new baby to join the family soon. We love our kids but they sure take a lot of energy to raise. The trip we took gave us some valuable time together - to focus on our relationship. I am so grateful for a loving husband to work with in this life. Ryan helps me in so many ways.

Basement Update

It is amazing how fast this project is coming along. We are ready to paint. Here is a picture of the drywall (before mudding). We hope to be done soon.

Project - the Basement

This project started back in January with Ryan just going to Home Depot to grab a few 2x4s and planning to make a closet to enclose the water heater and heater to be a mechanical room. This was an effort to make the basement more safe for kids to play in. After feeling good about some little framing, Ryan decided to make a closet next to the mechanical room, and then even expanded his framing into the main part of the basement. Now - 3 months later, the whole basement is framed and has plumbing in a soon-to-be bathroom, heating vents and some electrical outlets and light fixtures. We still need to get the permit finalized to make this all official, but he has had some great help from neighbors who have finished their own basements and know a lot about what needs to be done. This has kept Ryan busy and has forced us to go through all of our junk in the basement. We are excited to watch the progress and hope to finish it most of the way by summer time.

It's a Girl!

Well, it's a little girl. This is a view of her hand waving "HI" and the profile of her head from our ultrasound. This little thing that has been growing inside me over the past few months has made life a little harder for me. I am finally feeling a lot better after a few months of nausia and tiredness. So far everything seems to be normal and we should have our new baby in July sometime.

We had a good Christmas and New Years, and survived a snowy January and February. The snow has now melted, finally and the grass is coming out of hibernation. I am always glad to start seeing the first signs of spring - buds on the trees, daffodils poking up out of the ground, yellowish/brown grass starting to turn green, and warmer days.

Early Thanksgiving with Bogues and Fifes

We got together in Idaho Falls with Chris and Gina (from Montana) and their kids at my parents house in early November. We celebrated Mom and Caleb's birthdays and had our thanksgiving with them. It was such a nice weekend. We all went out to breakfast on Saturday morning and had our big turkey dinner on Saturday evening. Caleb and Brian got a long pretty well. They both enjoyed playing with trucks and trains. Little Aubrey was sure cute, and we actually got a pretty good picture of her on her daddy's lap without her binky in her mouth. We had quite an adventure as Allison dropped her cell phone into one of the toilets. Chris took the toilet apart to try and find it, but it must have gone down trough the pipes and now is sitting in the septic tank below their house. She was pretty bummed. We did enjoy a couple of games with the group but mostly it was nice to just visit and catch up on how everyone is doing.

Time Out Nap

Time out turned into nap time. This was just one of those moments you had to catch on camera. It was an evening when Caleb didn't get a nap and was starting to get into trouble. Often when he starts getting out of control, we put him in "time out" on one of the steps leading to our family room. I guess he was getting out of control because he was just really tired and instead we should have just put him to bed. I don't think he was in time out for too long before he just decided to lay down and go to sleep.

Caleb's 4th Birthday

Caleb had a fun birthday in November. We went to the Children's Discovery Museum on his birthday (after the big kids got home from school) and had McDonalds for dinner. Those are two of his favorite places to be. We got home pretty late from our fun activities and had a quick bowl of ice cream with bananas. Caleb didn't seem too disapointed that we didn't have cake.

We spent the weekend before his birthday at Grandma and Grandpa Bogue's home in Idaho Falls. On the way back home to Utah, we stopped at Grandma and Grandpa Moores' home to celebrate Moore family birthdays and have dinner with them.

Caleb loves to ride bikes, but his old bike was a little different from this new one he got. This new bike has brakes (when you peddle back wards). His old bike didn't have brakes. If you peddle forward, you go forward, and if you peddle backwards, you go backwards. When he first got on his new bike, he tried to go backwards and it wouldn't go. So he was excited to get some new toy tools for his birthday. He spent hours the next day trying to fix his new bike with his new tools. Finally after a few hours of frustration, I made him take the bike outside and taught him how to ride his real bike with brakes. It may take him a while to get used to it. Maybe when he gets more comfortable he will even want to take the training wheels off. I hope not too soon.

Catching Up

It has been a while since I have added to our blog. We have been busy and I just barely find time to keep up with email while I am on the computer. If I spend too much time on the computer I start to feel bad that I am ignoring Caleb during the day and sometimes he gets anxious to play his PBS games. When the older kids get home, Megan wants to do her littlest pet shop game and Collin wants to play on the cartoon network site. When Ryan gets home he has been working on the computer - getting all of our recipes entered into allrecipes.com. Our computer has become a little too popular. By the end of the day I am too tired to do anything. So unless I get up really early before everyone wakes up, I don't get much done on recording our family blog. Lately I have really loved my sleep, so getting up early hasn't happened a lot. But I want to have our memories recorded so I will try to catch up as best as I can.

Well now it is the end of November and we just had Thanksgiving. We had a nice visit with Ryan's family at Jen and Jason's house. Our kids love playing with their cousins. Hailey kept them busy jumping on their neighbors' trampoline, coloring pictures of turkeys and pilgrims, and playing on their air hockey table. We even had some time to sit and look at all the adds for Black Friday.

Yesterday was Black Friday and I did make it out to the stores for a couple of hours before Ryan went to work. I didn't leave until 7 am so I missed the early rush. The store crowds were very manageable by the time I got there. I got just a couple of good deals, but for the most part everything I wanted was gone before I got there. I am glad I didn't try to fight the 5am crowds by myself.

I am going to try to get all of my Christmas shopping done early this year. Of course each year I say that, but I am always running out on Christmas eve doing the last minute stuff. I just try to get most of it done before December so that I can enjoy the season as much as possible.

I really appreciated President Monson's talk at General Conference where he advised us to enjoy the journey. That is hard to do sometimes. I feel that if we try to simplify life as much as possible, be grateful for what we do have and are blessed with, and focus on serving others, we can enjoy this jouney of life much more. I am grateful for my family and the fun memories we enjoy together.

Back in October, we went out to Jackson Hole, Wyoming with Ryan's family. We have made this an almost yearly tradition. We love to look for moose with Grandpa and love seeing all the fall leaves around the town and on the way up and back. Here are a couple of pictures from our trip this year.

We have had some warm days this fall. I have really enjoyed the mild temperatures. We had a fun time during fall break in the middle of October when the kids were out of school for a couple of days. We went to the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point, the Scarecrow Masquerade at Wheeler Farms, and took some time to go out to the park and play. For Halloween, the kids even got to wear their costumes to school and at night without jackets to keep them warm. It is always a bummer to cover the costumes up with a jacket on those years when it is snowy and cold. Here are a few pictures.

For Halloween, Caleb was a cute little pirate and was so good at saying "Argh", Megan was Cinderella, and Collin was a ninja.

We Survived the Puppies

Megan is our animal lover. All of our kids like dogs and animals. But Megan is the one who will sit and hold them if she can for hours. We watched Grandma and Grandpa Moore's puppies for 4 days while they left for Jackson Hole. We were excited to have the experience of dogs in our house again (as we did for Kyle and Lindsay's pugs). We didn't see many allergic reactions to the puppies this time around.

Megan loves to sit and hold little Argie, but he will always try to lick you when you pick him up. He isn't very cuddly. Since getting his hair cut a while ago, he is really looking like a Scottie. His ears are starting to stick up too.

Paisley is much better about letting you hold her. She is starting to look like a Scottie, but is still a little scruffy looking.

Both puppies are very playful and cute. They loved playing fetch with the balls and digging in the gravel pit. They do fight a lot (but I think it is just rough play). Each morning after going potty, they would rough house in their play yard and make lots of noise in the process. After a few hours of play they would both collapse and rest for a few hours in the early afternoon. By about 2:00 they were ready for some more play.

Since they are still working on potty training, we had them stay in an enclosed area of our kitchen when they were inside. To try to minimize the poop clean up and garden destruction we also had a big play yard for them to be in when they were outside by themselves. We would let them run free when one of the kids or I were with them outside. They did get plenty of attention during the 4 days we had them. We tried to take them on a walk around the neighborhood, but we ended up carrying Paisley most of the way. I took the dogs to the bus stop on Monday and the kids enjoyed having that special greeting as they got off the bus.

It was a fun adventure. But Ryan and I were glad to take the puppies back home at the end. If we do get a puppy it will just be one. And neither of us are in a hurry to get one.

Camping in September

I know it is October and I haven't done very good at updating our blog. We have been busy trying to work out our routine for the school year, and well life can just be busy sometimes. We have tried to go camping each year with the kids. This year we squeezed our camping trip in during the middle of September. I would have prefered doing it in the summer, but at least we went. We got a new big tent a few years ago - when Caleb was a little baby. This is the third time we have used it.

We went up Big Cottonwood Canyon on Friday afternoon (the 12th of Sept right after school) and the kids and I started to set up camp. Collin, Megan and I got the tent up most of the way. When Ryan arrived later (after work), he had to do the last few poles. Ryan's mom and dad came up as well, but just for a quick dinner and roasting marshmallows. (or Smarshmallows as Caleb calls them). Ryan's mom always liked to make french dip sandwiches when they would go camping as a family. So we love it when she offers to make the dinner for us.

It was a cold evening, so Grandma and Grandpa didn't stay for too long. We tried to enjoy our camp fire as long as the kids would let us. But after about a half hour of begging to go to bed and get warm in their sleeping bags, we finally gave in to them. Of course in the middle of the night we had to make one potty run for caleb, and he made it without any problems.

Ryan and Collin got up early (at about 6am) to go fising near by. Unfortunately they didn't catch anything. I guess they enjoyed trying. Megan, Caleb and I just stayed snuggled in our sleeping bags until the sun came up and we had to get to the bathroom. It was so cold that we found it helpful to put our fresh clothes in our sleeping bags with us for a few minutes to warm them up before getting dressed.

We had egg mcMuffin sandwiches for breakfast (one of Ryan's specialities that he would do on his many scouting camp outs a few years ago when he was the scout master). We broke camp and were home around 1PM. It was a quick trip and tiring. But we hope the kids enjoyed going.

New Pups

Grandma and Grandpa Moore got two new puppies - a white Scottie named Argyle (or Argie) and a black Scottie named Paisley. Argie was born the beginning of June and is now almost 4 months old. Here are a few of his pictures from when he was brand new. I am not sure which white puppy he is, but apparently they found out that he was the dominant puppy of the litter. Ryan's sister, Stephanie got the one black puppy of the same litter - a boy puppy they named Mickey. The first picture is when they were just a few days old. The second picture is at one month.

Argie is starting to look more like a Scottie. Here are a couple of more recent pictures. The first one was at about 2 months and the second one is at 3 months. Ever since they brought Argie home, he has been quite a busy little puppy. As most puppies, Argie like to chew on anything - pant legs, fingers, anything he can get his mouth on. Our kids love to try to pet and hold him, but are learning to be careful with their fingers.

Paisley is still fairly new. She was born at the end of July. She is a little cuddleier than Argie. She is just getting the hang of potty training and easily learned to use the doggie door. She doesn’t seem to be as interested in biting yet, but I am sure that will come.

These two dogs have been a challenge for Grandma and Grandpa. They didn't get along at first and they had to learn to go potty outside on the grass. They finally got the dogs to tolerate each other and they are now in the same pen together. Both are doing pretty good at the potty training. They have even gotten Argie to learn a few tricks like "Fetch" and to come at a specific command "Yep". Although Paisley is younger, she can be feisty at times. Argie can be quite rough too. They like to bite, growl and play fight, so you don't want to interfere in their little quarrels.

We are going to watch the two puppies at our house this coming weekend, and the kids are just so excited. We would love to get a dog, but I am not sure I am ready for the responsibility and costs of one yet. So for now, we will just enjoy Grandma and Grandpa's dogs. They love to visit Grandma and Grandpa Fife’s - Barney, and Grandma and Grandpa Bogue's - Snickers as well.